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Here’s a fun idea we found on the Red Vines Facebook page: red licorice enrobed in white chocolate, drizzled with dark chocolate.

You can make them for Halloween. Simply melt white chocolate, dip licorice and dry on wax paper. When white chocolate has dried, drizzle with milk chocolate (use a squeeze bottle).

Licorice is a “healthier candy”: no cholesterol, no salt. Few Americans have grown up without sampling bags of Twizzlers or licorice ropes. But it started out as medicine!

THE HISTORY OF LICORICE

We know licorice as moderately firm, semi-firm gelled candy. But for thousands of years in ancient China, Egypt and Greece, it was a cure for stomach and respiratory ills, as well as a thirst remedy for travelers and soldiers.* The troops of Alexander the Great and the Roman legions used it. Even today, it is used as a homeopathic remedy to soothe irritated membranes and loosen congestion in the upper respiratory tract. It helps as an anti-inflammatory, with allergies and with the liver.

A “twist” on conventional licorice. Photo courtesy Red Vines.

Use of licorice has been documented for 3,000 years. Ancient Egyptians created a sweet drink from it. Large quantities of licorice root were found in the tomb of King Tut (1356 to 1339 B.C.E.) A popular version of the drink, called mai sus, is still enjoyed in Egypt.

The Caesars advocated licorice as a health remedy. Some 1800 years later, Napoleon Bonaparte chewed licorice for his ongoing digestive problems. Over time, his teeth turned black from the concentration of licorice juice. (You can chew on a piece of licorice root if you want the experience —just don’t make a habit of it.)

Licorice extract is made from the root of the licorice plant, Glycyrrhiza glabra. A member of the pea family that is native to southeastern Europe, licorice grows about four feet high with pretty bluish purple and white flowers that resemble sweet pea blossom. Although they have similar flavor notes, licorice is not related to the spices anise and star anise, the vegetable fennel or the spice tarragon. The relation is that all of these plants and spices contain anethole, an aromatic and sweet-tasting ether compound.

*According to Theophrastus, writing in the third century B.C.E., the Scythians were able to live for 12 days without water because they chewed on licorice root.

To make licorice extract or syrup, the dried root is boiled in water; then most of the water is evaporated. In addition to health remedies and confections, licorice is used in cooking to flavor broths, herbal teas, liqueur and soft drinks. The root can be chewed as a breath freshener. Before the widespread availability of affordable sugar, licorice was used as a sweetener (glycyrrhizin, a component of licorice, is 50 times sweeter than table sugar but also carries with it the strong licorice flavor).

LICORICE FACTS

Around 1500, licorice arrived in Europe with crusaders returning from the Holy Land. Monks continued the homeopathic uses, which spread across Europe during the Renaissance.

Dominican friars introduced licorice to England. At some point, some manufacturer began to add honey to the licorice. In the late Middle Ages, licorice pastilles cast in rough molds were widely available.

A monastery in Pointer, England, in Yorkshire, became popular for its licorice discs, stamped with a seal (for decor and branding) and known as “Pointer cakes,” launched in 1614. In 1760, as sugar became affordable, it was added to Pointer cakes, which ratcheted up the popularity of licorice considerably. Pointer Cakes are still manufactured in Pointer, England.

LICORICE AS A CONFECTION

At some point, licorice, sweetened with honey or sugar, took on a new purpose: candy. While licorice extract continued to be used for medicinal purposes, its sweet chewiness made it a popular treat.

Extruded licorice candy (in tubes and ropes) is believed to have originated in Holland at the beginning of the 17th century.

When the candy industry developed during the Industrial Revolution of the mid-1800s, licorice became one of the standard confections.

Today licorice can be found in the shape of animals (cats, cows, pigs, reindeer, Scotties), bites, coins, drops, jujubes, laces (also called lariats, ropes and vines), pipes, sandwiches (part of an allsorts mix), tubes, twists and wheels and animals.

We saw these inviting marshmallow lollipops on the website of La Chocolate, an Australian chocolatier. “Make a batch of me,” they called out.

So we decided to make them for Father’s Day.

RECIPE: CHOCOLATE COVERED MARSHMALLOWS ON A STICK

Ingredients

10 large marshmallows

2 cups chocolate chips or other chocolate for melting

Popsicle sticks

Sprinkles or other decorations*

*You can vary the color and type of decorations by holiday: little Valentine hearts, stars for July 4th, etc.

Preparation

1. MELT chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl for 30 seconds; stir and continue to microwave and stir at 30-second intervals. Take care not to scorch the chocolate. If there’s just a slight amount of undissolved chocolate, for example, whisk it to melt it instead of overheating the chocolate.

2. DIP the marshmallows into the chocolate with a fork or other utensil. Place on waxed paper or aluminum foil. Sprinkle with decorations. Allow to set (you can do this in the fridge).

3. INSERT sticks.

PRESENTATION

Marshmallow pops lying on a tray is one option, but you can get more creative in your presentation.

Bowl or vase. Fill a deep bowl or small vase with another food that will anchor the marshmallow pops: M&Ms or other small hard candies, rice, lentils or beans, etc.

Loaf cake. Buy a pound cake or other loaf cake and let it get slightly stale. Insert the pops into the top. Afterward, you can toast the pound cake and serve it with ice cream, or use it for fondue. You can make a Rice Krispie Treats recipe in a loaf pan for this purpose, and eat it after the pops are gone. If you have a fruit cake in the pantry, its dense texture makes a worthy pop holder.

Melon. A watermelon or other pretty melon can serve as your base. You may need to trim the bottom to create a level base, and use an ice pick to make holes for the sticks. But you can still eat the melon afterward.

April 12th is National Licorice Day. We’ll let others debate the merits of Red Vines versus Twizzlers; our heart belongs to Australian licorice, which is spelled liquorice there and in other parts of the former British Empire.

In 2011, the last year for which we could find figures, U.S. licorice sales topped $359 million, a 6.56% increase over the prior year and proof that not everyone is dying for chocolate (the non-chocolate candy market had total sales of $6.87 billion).

Licorice extract is made from the root of the licorice plant, Glycyrrhiza glabra. It derives its botanical name from Greek words meaning “sweet root.” The sap of the root is 50 times sweeter than sugar!

A member of the pea family that is native to southeastern Europe, licorice grows about four feet high. Its pretty bluish purple and white flowers that resemble sweet pea blossoms.

Although they have similar flavor notes, licorice is not related to the spices anise and star anise, the vegetable fennel or the spice tarragon. The relation is that all of these plants and spices contain anethole, an aromatic and sweet-tasting ether compound.

Licorice “shooters” from Kookaburra, one of our favorites. Photo by Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.

We know licorice as moderately firm, semi-firm gelled candy. But for thousands of years in ancient China, Egypt and Greece, it was a cure for stomach and respiratory ills, as well as a thirst remedy for travelers and soldiers. It soothes irritated membranes and loosens congestion in the upper respiratory tract. It helps as an anti-inflammatory effects, with allergies and with the liver.

Medicinal use of licorice has been documented for 3,000 years. Ancient Egyptians created a drink from it (a popular version of the drink, called mai sus, is still enjoyed in Egypt). Large quantities of licorice root were found in the tomb of King Tut (1356 to 1339 B.C.E.)

The troops of Alexander the Great and the Roman legions used licorice. The Caesars advocated licorice as a health remedy. Some 1800 years later, Napoleon Bonaparte chewed licorice for his ongoing digestive problems. Over time, his teeth turned black from the concentration of licorice juice. You can chew on a piece of licorice root if you want the experience, or are headed to a Halloween party.

There is no documentation on the first appearance of the peanut cluster, but we know a few things:

After some 3300 years as a beverage, the first solid chocolate began to appear in Europe around 1840.

Peanuts, which originated in South America, were brought to West Africa by Portuguese and Spanish traders. Peanuts became a staple crop for West Africans, and came to the Southern U.S. with the slave trade around the late 1600s.

The first pressed chocolate tablets, pastilles and figures were produced in Belgium. The chocolate was also used by confectioners to enrobe nuts and fruits. See our history of chocolate timeline.

We can deduce that sometime after that, American confectioners began to make similar confections, including enrobed peanut clusters. Previously peanut clusters without a chocolate coating were held together with caramel or honey.

This recipe was adapted from one submitted to Taste Of Home by Joy Dulaney of Highland Village, Texas. The total prep time is less than 30 minutes.

The original recipe called for milk chocolate confectionary coating.* You’ll get much better flavor from using a quality chocolate couverture (we used Guittard). You can also use real chocolate chips.

You can use dark, milk or white chocolate, or split the recipe in half or thirds and make some of each.

The recipe also uses toffee bits, an easier recipe than making caramel peanut clusters. However, if you have caramels on hand, you can chop up an equivalent amount to substitute for the toffee bits. We took that route, and preferred the chewiness of the caramel.

Ingredients

1-1/2 pounds quality chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 jar (16 ounces) dry roasted peanuts

8 ounces toffee bits or chopped caramels

Preparation

1. MELT chocolate in a double boiler or in a microwave-safe dish. Stir until smooth.

*Confectionary coating, also called compound coating and decorator’s chocolate, is a chocolate-type product that substitutes vegetable oil for all or part of the cocoa butter. Along with sugar and cocoa powder, traditional chocolate production techniques are used to create a less expensive coating that does not require tempering, melts easily and hardens quickly. In milk chocolate-flavored coatings, whey powders, whey derivatives and dairy blends can be used instead of powdered milk. Products made with confectionary coating must be designated “chocolate-flavored,” to indicate that they are not “real” chocolate.

Gumdrops are a chewy, brightly-colored, fruit-flavored confection, shaped like a truncated cone and coated in granulated sugar. When they are flavored with spices (allspice, cinnamon, clove, licorice, peppermint and wintergreen, for example) they’re called spice drops.

Gumdrops are believed to be an American invention, but the date and the inventor are lost to history (along with the origin of the phrase, “goody goody gumdrops.” The earliest known printed reference is advertisement from The Illinois State Chronicle in 1859, offering “Fresh GumDrops, assorted flavor wholesale or retail.” Invention can predate reference by decades (or much longer—the earlier in history and the less surviving the printed material, it can be hundreds of years earlier).

The Candy Land board game, invented in 1945, features both a Gumdrop Pass and a Gumdrop Mountain as enticing topography. In the U.K. the drops are called American hard gum candy.

Gumdrops are progenitors of the pectin- or gelatin-based group of candies that includes Dots, jelly beans, Jujubes and gummy candies. Although gumdrops and their siblings, spearmint leaves and orange slices, have fallen out of fashion in favor of of gummy candies, they are still popular with bakers (for garnishing cakes and cupcakes) and crafters. Where would gingerbread houses be without that gumdrop decor?

We think it’s time to get gummy with it, gumdrop-style. So track down some gumdrops and celebrate National Gumdrop Day. You may just find yourself asking, “Why don’t I enjoy these more often?”

Hard candy begins by boiling sugar and water, then adding flavors and colors. As the syrup boils, water evaporates and the sugar concentration increases.

Who invented hard candy?

HARD CANDY HISTORY

Cave men ate honey from bee hives. Ancient Arabs, Chinese and Egyptians rolled fruits and nuts in honey. That was it for many centuries.

Head to the supermarket or candy store and pick up some hard candies. Photo courtesy QCandy.com.

In the Middle Ages, merchants brought sugar back from the Indian subcontinent, where sugar cane originated. But it was very costly. Whether for tea, baked goods or confections, sugar was a treat for the wealthy. Honey was the sweetener available to those of lesser means.

By the 17th century there were many more sugar mills, and sugar became more affordable to the middle class. Confectioners began to express their creativity, resulting in the large selection of hard candy we have today.

With the Industrial Revolution (1750 to 1850), candy-making developed into an industry and hard candies became accessible to everyone. Hard candy on a stick followed: The word “lollipop” (originally spelled lollypop) first appeared in print in 1784.

Here’s more about the manufacture of hard candy. Read it as you enjoy a piece.

Pick up a bag or two at the supermarket, or head to the candy store to customize a nostalgic selection.

A chocolate crisis, according to the Chocolate Crisis Center, is defined as “an emotionally stressful situation caused by an insufficient supply of premium quality chocolate.”

What are those emotionally stressful situations? The holiday season: shopping, decorating, entertaining, dieting (yeah, sure). It all adds up to seasonal insanity, says the Chocolate Crisis Center.

Their solution: a variety of chocolate candy pills that “will give you the fortitude to survive the season.”

Or the office. Or the kids. Or anything, one chocolate bite at a time.

The Chocolate Crisis Center, which is not a government agency but a Denver-based producer of confections, packages confections in classic pill bottles and First Aid kits: Caramels, truffles, nuts and fruits are enrobed in rich Belgian dark or milk chocolate.

These delicious confections are then topped with cocoas, spices and fruit essences for a wide range of delectable taste surprises—all with a humorous “First Aid” twist.

Everything we tried was delicious. Individual bottles, called Daily Doses, are delightful stocking stuffers or party favors.

Various kits are larger gifts. There are Calamity Kits, Major Crisis Kits, a Minor Crisis Kit and a Shock Treatment Kit, some assembled from your choice of the Daily Dose candies:

There’s more, including Holiday Blues Peppermint Creams, a large blue bottle of jumbo “pills” the size of a nickel, a gentle peppermint coating over a soft, green minty center. The mint is very delicate—there’s no throat-cooling blast of peppermint oil. Seven big “pills” per serving is more than most people need to be cured.